Teacher evaluation procedures, if ineptly accomplished, are potentially vulnerable to litigation (which most school districts can ill afford), because there is no consensus as to what constitutes effective teaching; hence the validity of rating systems and/or reliability of observations is open to challenge. Accordingly, the evaluation policies and procedures in five Utah school districts are analyzed to derive a composite picture of characteristic legally vulnerable flaws: (1) the stated criteria are not clearly tied to the teaching task; (2) the performance criteria are not clearly defined in terms of observable behaviors or explicit standards; (3) there is no training for evaluators, and so there is no guarantee of reliability or consistency in the observation process. Because Utah has no statutes governing teacher evaluation, a series of landmark court decisions are cited that bear on the above issues. These include "Griggs vs. Duke Power Co." (1970), which prohibits non-job-related employment practices; "Chance vs. Board of Examiners" (1972), which requires evaluation criteria to demonstrate both content and predictive validity; and "Brito et al. vs. The Zia Company" (1973), which prohibits ill-defined and subjectively based evaluation criteria. An appendix provides the eight questions used to assess the deficiencies in the evaluation procedures under study. (TE)